BRUCE FEIN: Yeah, of course, the– difference is one thing to claim that, you know, Gulf of Tonkin resolution, was too broadly drafted. But we’re talking about assertions of power that affect the individual liberties of every American citizen. Opening your mail, your e-mails, your phone calls. Breaking and entering your homes. Creating a pall of fear and intimidation if you say anything against the president you may find retaliation very quickly. We’re claiming he’s setting precedents that will lie around like loaded weapons anytime there’s another 9/11.

Right now the victims are people whose names most Americans can’t pronounce. And that’s why they’re not so concerned. They will start being Browns and Jones and Smiths. And that precedent is being set right now. And one of the dangers that I see is it’s not just President Bush but the presidential candidates for 2008 aren’t standing up and saying–

BRUCE FEIN: –“If I’m president, I won’t imitate George Bush.” That shows me that this is a far deeper problem than Mr. Bush and Cheney.

BILL MOYERS: That struck me about your writings and your book. You say your great– your great fear is that Bush and Cheney will hand off to their successors a toolbox that they will not avoid using.

JOHN NICHOLS: … On January 20th, 2009, if George Bush and Dick Cheney are not appropriately held to account this administration will hand off a toolbox with more powers than any president has ever had, more powers than the founders could have imagined. And that box may be handed to Hillary Clinton or it may be handed to Mitt Romney or Barack Obama or someone else.

But whoever gets it, one of the things we know about power is that people don’t give away the tools. They don’t give them up. The only way we take tools out of that box is if we sanction George Bush and Dick Cheney now and say the next president cannot govern as these men have.

BRUCE FEIN: Well, that’s accurate but also we do find this peculiarity that Congress is giving up powers voluntarily. because there’s nothing right now, Bill, that would prevent Congress from the immediate shutting down all of George Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s illegal programs. Simply saying there’s no money to collect foreign intelligence-

BILL MOYERS: The power of the purse-

BRUCE FEIN: –the power of the purse. That is an absolute power. And yet Congress shies from it. It was utilized during the Vietnam War, you may recall, in 1973. Congress said there’s no money to go and extend the war into Laos and Cambodia. And even President Nixon said okay. This was a president who at one time said, “If I do it, it’s legal.” So that it we do find Congress yielding the power to the executive branch. It’s the very puzzle that the founding fathers would have been stunned at. They worried most over the legislative branch in, you know, usurping powers of the other branches. And–

BILL MOYERS: Well, what you just said indicts the Congress more than you’re indicting George Bush and Dick Cheney.

BRUCE FEIN: In some sense, yes, because the founding fathers expected an executive to try to overreach and expected the executive would be hampered and curtailed by the legislative branch. And you’re right. They have basically renounced– walked away from their responsibility to oversee and check.

It’s not an option. It’s an obligation when they take that oath to faithfully uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. And I think the reason why this is. They do not have convictions about the importance of the Constitution. It’s what in politics you would call the scientific method of discovering political truths and of preventing excesses because you require through the processes of review and vetting one individual’s perception to be checked and– counterbalanced by another’s. And when you abandon that process, you abandon the ship of state basically and it’s going to capsize.

Oh the Democrats cannot wait:

BRUCE FEIN: Let me underscore one of the things that you remember, Bill, ’cause I was there at the time of Watergate. And this relates to one political– official in the White House, Sara Taylor’s testimony. And claiming that George Bush could tell her to be silent.

BILL MOYERS: That was a great moment when Sara Taylor said, “I took an oath to uphold the president.” Did you see that?

BRUCE FEIN: Yes. And that was like the military in Germany saying, “My oath is to the Fuhrer, not to the country.” She took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. I did, too, when I was in the government. There’s no oath that says, “I’m loyal to a president even if he defiles the Constitution.”

JOHN NICHOLS: Ever.

JOHN NICHOLS: The hearings are important. There’s no question at that. And we should be at that stage. Remember, Thomas Jefferson and others, the founders, suggested that impeachment was an organic process. That information would come out. The people would be horrified. They would tell their representatives in Congress, “You must act upon this.” Well, the interesting thing is we are well down the track in the organic process. The people are saying it’s time. We need some accountability.

BILL MOYERS: But Nancy Pelosi doesn’t agree.

JOHN NICHOLS: Nancy Pelosi is wrong. Nancy Pelosi is disregarding her oath of office. She should change course now. And more importantly, members of her caucus and responsible Republicans should step up. It is not enough–

BILL MOYERS: Well, Bruce is not the only conservative–

JOHN NICHOLS: –and others are. But–

BILL MOYERS: And Bob Barr, who’s been here.

BRUCE FEIN: David Keene

JOHN NICHOLS: But they do so, by and large, in a cautious way. They say, “Well, the president’s done too much.” Let’s start to use the “i” word. Impeach is a useful word. It is a necessary word. The founders in the Constitution made no mention of corporation or political parties or conventions or primaries or caucuses. But they made six separate references to impeachment. They wanted us to know this word, and they wanted us to use it.

Whammo! Thanks fellas.

*************************************************

Share this:

Like this:

Related

BRUCE FEIN: –the power of the purse. That is an absolute power. And yet Congress shies from it. It was utilized during the Vietnam War, you may recall, in 1973. Congress said there’s no money to go and extend the war into Laos and Cambodia. And even President Nixon said okay…

One reason they shy away is that they push, as do right-wingers, the myth that crusades rushed into by fools would be winnable if only the fools threw more on the pyre. Since it’s hard to prove a negative, who can prove that another ten years of war would NOT have led to us defeating the Vietnamese ? Of course, a humane commentator or politician would merely point out that a victory in an unjust war does not change into something else. And that such a victory is simply too costly, at all levels, to entertain as a worthwhile goal.

I once tried to explain to a Norwegian woman why it was so hard for me to find health insurance. I’d had breast cancer, I told her, and she looked at me blankly. “But then you really need insurance, right?” Of course, and that’s why I couldn’t have it.

This is not because health insurance executives are meaner than other people, although I do not rule that out. It’s just that they’re running a business, the purpose of which is not to make people healthy but to make money, and they do very well at that. Once, many years ago, I complained to the left-wing economist Paul Sweezey that America had no real healthcare system. “We have a system, all right,” he responded. “It’s just a system for doing something else.” A system, as he might have put it today, for extracting money from the vulnerable and putting it into the pockets of the rich.

But let’s not just pick on the insurance companies, though I wouldn’t mind doing that–with a specially designed sharp instrument, over a period of years. Sunday’s Los Angeles Times featured a particularly lurid case of medical profiteering in the form of one Dr. Prem Reddy, who owns eight hospitals in Southern California. I do not begrudge any physician a comfortable life–good doctoring is hard work–but Dr. Reddy dwells in a 15,000-square-foot mansion featuring gold-plated toilets and keeps a second home, valued at more than $9 million, in Beverly Hills, as well as a $1.4 million helicopter for commuting.

The secret behind his $300 million fortune? For one thing, he rejects the standard hospital practice of signing contracts with insurance companies, because he feels that these contracts unduly limit his reimbursements. (In a battle between Aetna and Reddy, it would be hard to know which side to cheer for.) In addition, he has suspended much-needed services such as chemotherapy, a birthing center and mental- health care as insufficiently profitable. And his hospitals are infamous for refusing to treat uninsured patients, like a patient with kidney failure and a 16-month-old baby with a burn.

But Dr. Reddy–who is, incidentally a high-powered Republican donor–has a principled reason for his piratical practices. “Patients,” the Los Angeles Times reports him as saying, “may simply deserve only the amount of care they can afford.” He dismisses as “an entitlement mentality” the idea that everyone should be getting the same high-quality healthcare. This is Bush’s vaunted principle of “private medicine” at its nastiest: You don’t get what you need, only what you can pay for.

If government insurance for children (S-CHIP) isn’t expanded to all the families who need it, there is no question but that some children will die–painfully perhaps and certainly unnecessarily. But at least they will have died for a principle.

As far as the Dem debates, they should just call it “Quien es mas macho?’ because none of them come from a basic Democrat stance, that of the poor and working class. They are all faux-Republicans who deserve to be blasted every time they speak.

An indictment of Congress, absolutely. It’s clear they will not hold these criminals responsible by now. The push against it is so obvious, and from Democrats, like the Speaker of the House. And her enablers.

I missed that Moyers show, thanks for the transcript Marisacat … great comments from all of them. They are saying what many on dk have been saying. Good to see them put it so clearly. Nancy is violating her oath of office. Moyers et al would be banned at DK.

Congress has the power to stop the excesses of the executive branch, but this Congress clearly will not do so. All their excuses are bs. I think it’s time to put the effort into finding good candidates who are independent to run in districts all over the country. That seems to be the best way to change things right now.

I always liked Ralph, ms xeno (if you’re still around :-)) but my question always was, why didn’t he run for Congress? He never had a chance of winning the presidency, but I do think he could have won a Congressional seat. That might have encouraged others to do the same. Imo, people are ready to vote for a candidate who is not attached to either party. Look at the poll numbers for Congress … if ever there was a time, it is now. Instead of worrying about the presidential campaign we should focus on Independents for Congress.

I havent really followed Open Left (it needs a nickname bad… open sore?) but my intial thought was that they figured out that DK was at the end of its life cycle and were trying to create a new “empty vessel” to drive the traffic to.

I used to know this owner of a club. He kept the same location but every 2-3 years redid. New Name, New Decor, New Concept. he just tried tp keep slightly ahead of the curve. One year it would be a hard rock venue the next a swell martini dive.

The people who do bars/restraunts/clubs remind me a lot of the bloggers. One group owned all the bars on one particular strip. Most people didnt know this. during teh week they had this thing where they had a specials/events at a differnt club every nite. So Mon is the big nite at Club A, Tues Club B. The clientele jsut moved around never realizing it was all programmed. they only had to fully staff and stock the all the bars on Fri and Sat. They also didnt have to compete for business so there were never drink specials or no cover etc at more than one location.

Elise, I see – I briefly skimmed her post and it jumped out – is still waving the Chavez name, apparently now red cape to all good people-powered bulls. Fuck’s sake. Cindy’s support for Chavez is fine. There is enough he has done to make it fine, in the good column. I notice lately that simply the word “Chavez” has become boogey-manified over at Kos, esp amongst the Cindy disparagers.

Funny how they will automatically villify this man who is not really hurting anyone, certainly nowhere close to what Bush has done, yet it is okay to support Democrats who have solidly stood behind this horrendous twoheaded-monster admin, BushCheney, in their war, stomping on poor and middle class, anti abortion, torture, judicial nightmare noms, wiretapping, habeus corpus killing, extraordinary rendition, black prison usage, etc and so on… Its okay to support them and Democrats who stand with them, or Dems who stand with those who stand with them.

Yet Cindy stands with Chavez – who solidly stands against Bush and historical US imperialism/neoliberalism to control LA, as well as its insane warring and economic armtwisting in any region) and this is somehow supposed to make her name mud.

The people who do bars/restraunts/clubs remind me a lot of the bloggers. One group owned all the bars on one particular strip.

Most people didnt know this. during teh week they had this thing where they had a specials/events at a differnt club every nite. So Mon is the big nite at Club A, Tues Club B.

The clientele jsut moved around never realizing it was all programmed. they only had to fully staff and stock the all the bars on Fri and Sat. They also didnt have to compete for business so there were never drink specials or no cover etc at more than one location.

— Revisionist

PRECISELY. It was that sort of business model that first clued me in to what Dkos/Alisters were doing. I got some of it watching Armando and MB sit on us at LSF, in the early days. I realised if a small blog was a bit edgey, it was a threat (I mean look at them OVER REACT to Cindy Sheehan, good lord!)

That site, LSF, had not been open 2 mos when people began to post unpleasant and nasty things about LSF in Dkos threads (second week of Dec 2004). Later there were indications, we could come inside where it ws warm, if we were smart.

LOL I so wanna be an “Amanda Marcotte”. LOL.

Boxing us in, boxing us up. Then someone I corresponded with said that a person she spoke to on the hill said the plan was, no matter where we go online, we end up getting the same message. From that I started calling sites like Martin’s “Box Car Sites”. Loaded us up and driving us around, like cattle …

Now obviously, lots of blogs out there, but look at Advertising Liberally, Kos has them boxed up. that group will never diverge much, if at all.

Steven D tried over Kos comments about Kathy SIerra. LOL NO ONE would say a word about Kos.

But some loved to bitch when they were dumped from the BlogRoll… and are STILL bitching about that. he has about 40 blogs by the neck.

And I still say, BMT was set up to net the butterflies and WIngless is to ”Agony Aunt” the atmosphere. And so they can point to a self declared unstable person as the “left opposition”.

Bowers says in his post that Cindy should have run in the Dem primary, not as an Independent, he could have sanctioned that, but then says Hoyer would be the speaker if Nancy lost, and then sarcastically says that would really help impeachment. So I guess Cindy can run in the Dem primary, but she is forbidden to win. Oh my.

If progressives leave the Democratic Party, it might help them feel uncorrupted, but it won’t help them pass progressive policy or build broad coalitions of any sort. If progressives leave the Democratic Party, it might help them further their argument that the Democratic Party is only slightly different from the Republican Party, but it will only be a self-fulfilling action. Of course the Democratic Party will be less progressive if progressives leave it, just as it will become more progressive if more progressives join it! In fact, if Cindy Sheehan were to win, Steny Hoyer would probably become Speaker of the House. Yeah–that will certainly swing the Democratic Party to the left, and result in impeachment charges being brought up against Bush, Cheney, Gonzales and others. Count on it.

Here, he confidently hums Cindy’s funeral dirge and speaks of her earlier “promise.”

Unfortunately, it appears that Cindy Sheehan adheres to the concept of intra-party democracy about as much as Joe Lieberman. That is her decision, and her embrace of irrelevance and self-defeating means of achieving power is her own. It is too bad, really, because two years ago she showed real promise as a new generation of protest leader, whose innovative tactics made the corporate media listen to anti-war protests more than they had to three years of some of the largest protests in the history of the world. I believe, actually, February 15, 2003 was the largest worldwide protest in the history of the world. And she got more attention then that! It was a promising time. This is not.

I like the part about how “two years ago she showed real promise” it’s too bad how she fucked up. Can you imagine saying she showed promise? That is what the ineffectual Dems do – show promise (after promise), and dont follow thru. Cindy went beyond showing promise, for crying out loud. She promised and she accomplished!

It is for exactly that reason that she has little patience – at this point, because she was patient – for those who dont carry out their duties, not even promises. Their DUTIES!

I didnt see what happened over at LSF. How did they lean on you guys? It is interesting, your scenario, because the BBBs are strikingly homogeneous, with a few slight off the ramp diversions once in a while. Its a scenario that, unfortunately, makes sense. The word you got from someone on the hill is creepily on the same page, too.

You really do see that boxed in aspect in the latest Cindy brouhaha over at DK. I saw a bunch of posts (like Elise’s) that just seemed so pathetic, they were yelling that the only way to be free one day, to get to the promised land, was to be in the cage. The one marked D. No matter what the Dems did, how they were failed, time and again, that was the ONLY way to do it right. That was sad. I could actually visualize the bars surrounding them. I could see the D elected officials confident that they were domesticated, unconcerned by any temporary cage rattling over disappointment xyz, because, after all, they had them in the cage. Willingly. Daily loyalty oaths are a daily outpouring, even amidst the occasional notes of dyspepsia.

Hell, maybe it was more like they were mounted on their walls, a la wild game bagger (killer) Ben Nelson. You know, the one who got front page hosanas from Armando for not being antiDem mouthy like Joe, while voting more rightwing than Joe.

You, on the other hand, in the face of this overwhelming evidence and a huge public backlash, have chosen to remain silent, probably praying and hoping this will all go away.

Well it isn’t. We are now going to start looking into the veracity of other reports you have aired on other topics. Nothing you say now can be believed. In 2002, the New York Times busted you for bringing celebrities on your shows and not telling your viewers they were paid spokespeople for the pharmaceutical companies. You promised never to do it again. But there you were, in 2005, talking to Joe Theismann, on air, as he pushed some drug company-sponsored website on prostate health. You said nothing about about his affiliation with GlaxoSmithKline.

Clearly, no one is keeping you honest, so I guess I’m going to have to do that job, too. $1.5 billion is spent each year by the drug companies on ads on CNN and the other four networks. I’m sure that has nothing to do with any of this. After all, if someone gave me $1.5 billion, I have to admit, I might say a kind word or two about them. Who wouldn’t?!

I expect CNN to put this matter to rest. Say you’re sorry and correct your story — like any good journalist would.

Well, since Bowers is totally irrelevant himself, I doubt Cindy has to worry about anything he says regarding relevancy. The rightwing talking points re Ciindy adapted and repeated by the dk lower-level hirees to ‘catapult the propaganda’ are most promiently these two:

!) Larouche
2) Chavez

And watch who, in the threads at dk, uses them, over and over again thereby helping to identifie themselves as low level operativess. They make it so easy. Lol!

Seriously, I love that the most unpopular people on the internet are the ones attacking Cindy. It helps her immensely because even people who aren’t crazy about her, when it comes to dk operatives v Cindy, she wins every time. That’s the price of being unpopular!

The exact same talking points re CIndy, repeated over and over again by the idiot contingency on dk, started on Free Republic, Fox etc. The wingnuts had those talking long before the dk crowd.

Really, they should stop imitating the rightwing, as Chait correctly accused them of doing. The material is old, it had little effect on Cindy when the right tried it. Re-cycling old rightwing talking points makes them all look as ignorant as Rush’s ditto heads. I’ve really never seen such stupid idiots. At least those I encountered on rightwing sites were original. Dk’s wingnut lite version is just pathetic.

And as the ‘netroots’ attacks the mother of a dead soldier (which is how the rest of the world sees it) they continue to protect Bush et al from prosecution for their crimes. And the crimes are horrific.

************

From Dahr Jamail, someone who, rather than sitting behind his computer attacking grieving mothers, risked his life to try to get attention and help for those who are the victims of this country’s massive crimes against the Iraqi people: It’s a long article about the worst refugee crisis, maybe ever, totally ignored by the US press, and of course, by the ‘netroots’ who continue to blather about irrelevancies:

UNHCR recently offered the following staggering projection: According to its best estimates about 12% of Iraq’s population, now assumed to be about 24 million people, will be displaced by the end of 2007. We’re talking about nearly 3 million ever more destitute Salim Hamads by the New Year. (Add to that Iraq’s growing population of internal refugees and its spiraling civilian death tolls and you have the kind of decimation of a nation rarely seen — with, undoubtedly, more to come.)

snip<

“So many Iraqis never leave their homes now because they are too afraid to go out due to the militias,” Abdul Abdulla, a 68-year-old who fled Baghdad with his family insisted, having literally grabbed the microphone I was using to tape my interview with Hassan.

From the volatile Yarmouk area of Baghdad, Abdulla, a Sunni, said Shia militia members waited on the outskirts of his neighborhood in order to detain anyone trying to leave. “We stayed in our homes, but even then some people were being detained from their own houses. These death squads started coming after [former U.S. ambassador John] Negroponte arrived. And the Iraqi Government is definitely involved because they depend on [the militias].”

While talking with Abdulla, I noticed a woman in a black abaya or gown covering her entire body, one of her arms in a cast, standing nearby.

When I approached Eman Abdul Rahid, a 46-year-old mother from Baghdad, she willingly told me her sad story, all too typical of civilian life in the Iraqi capital today. “I was injured,” she said, “because I was near a car bomb, which killed my daughter… There is killing, and threats of more killing, and explosions daily in Baghdad.” …..

I saw Negroponte on CNN this week, lying about ‘progress’ in Iraq. But he was not asked about his deadly policy of death squads in Iraq, not that it was ever a secret. It was openly discussed in a major publication when he was appointed, but there was little or no outrage in this country at the time.

PS, this may have been posted before, if so, I apologize. It’s from April, so I imagine it is much worse now … and his prediction about 12% of the population being displaced by the end of this year sounds more than possible. Criminals all of them Dems and Repubs! Anyone who is not enraged enough to want to see them jailed asap, imo, is complicit at this point.

Lol, Catnip, the sheer inanity is overwhelming sometimes. As I said, when the most despised and hated people on the internet attack her, even her former enemies on the right begin to sympathize with her, as your link the other day demonstrated. They should keep up the good work, who knows if they work hard enough, she might win that election. If only they had some of the same vitriol for Republicans! They are suspect by their own words.

Btw, I wonder what Sy Hersch would have to say about the male/female wonders of the ‘netroots’! I can only imagine. But this is what he had to say about Dahr Jamail:

“There is a young journalist here, Dahr Jamail, whose stuff has been very prescient, and I’ve four or five times included the brave accounts of some of his work in my stories…

Go Dahr and those who are really making a difference. As for the netroots, Yawn! Btw, have they had anything to say about reaching through their computer screens and punching US voters in the face, today? Lol! Brave souls they are ….

President George Bush has issued an instruction to his former White House counsel Harriet Miers to defy the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena. The Committee had sought to ask her about her role – and that of others in the White House – in firing a covey of United States Attorneys who were apparently not toeing the political line. Bush’s instruction sent a very clear signal: As I wrote earlier, and as has been clear from the outset, he is looking for a fight.

By not responding to the subpoena, the President and Ms. Miers all but invited the House Judiciary Committee and, in turn, the House of Representatives to vote to deem her in contempt of Congress. It was a defiant, in-your-face insult to Congress. No president would do this unless he was quite confident of the outcome. Clearly, Bush’s White House and Justice Department lawyers believe that the solidly conservative federal judiciary will grant them a favorable ruling, and that, in the process, they will greatly weaken congressional oversight powers, to the advantage of the White House.

In short, the Bush White House is not bluffing with this act of defiance. Rather, the White House truly wants to test, and attempt to expand, presidential power. Bush’s White House is ready, willing, and able to play hardball. Indeed, the White House may actually be trying to bait the House Judiciary Committee and the House of Representatives into voting to deem Ms. Miers in contempt of congress.

He has some suggestions for what they House should do, but I have no faith that Pelosi and the rest of the party “leadership” **cough** will do anything other than back down.

Dahr did a piece that included a bit about Canadians in Iraq a while ago and he was kind enough to e-mail me back quickly when I had questions about it. We had a bit of a discussion back and forth. I must say that I was impressed that he took the time to do that. He’s one of the very rare few who’s actually telling the truth as it is there. If only there were more like him.

The media did cover this fairly extensively. What was Congress doing? Did they even question Negroponte or will they? We always blame the media, but this time they did cover the story. I don’t remember any hearings after these reports to find out if this administration was committing war crimes in Iraq. Maybe there were. I’ll check. But regardless, the Iraqis themselves have made the connection. Now, there should be hearings. They are a disgrace, and people think they will end this war. Talk about delusional. They are fully on board from what I can see, Democrats and Republicans.

***********

Catnip, I agree, he is a true journalist, and it says a lot about him, considering what his schedule must be like, that he would respond to you. If anyone has earned the right to be an arrogant jerk, he has (not that anyone should be).

Compare that to kos and his befy of ‘administrators’ who have contributed nothing even close to what this man has done, yet do not respond to emails, pretentious fools that they are.

[Pakistani senator] Enver Baig also questioned Nato for policing the Mediterranean waters without getting a nod from the international community. He rather passed a sarcastic comment that the policing of Nato forces reminded him of ‘old pirates’ that caused a big laughter in the meeting.

Compare that to kos and his befy of ‘administrators’ who have contributed nothing even close to what this man has done, yet do not respond to emails, pretentious fools that they are.

No kidding. That hadn’t even occurred to me. The again, they are so busy “reforming” the Democratic party and making sure everybody follows TEH RULEZ. You can’t really expect them to respond to the serfs.

No president would do this unless he was quite confident of the outcome. Clearly, Bush’s White House and Justice Department lawyers believe that the solidly conservative federal judiciary will grant them a favorable ruling,

Exactly what people have tried to tell the morons on dk. Bush and his cabal were made perfectly safe when Nancy Pelosi removed the only option to hold them accountable. This has been repeated and repeated. They have stacked the judiciary. But they cannot get around the Impeachment process.

If Congress has any will at all to stop this runaway administration, they will put Impeachment back on the table and sign Kucinich’s H.Res 333. Nancy needs to get after Congressional Dems, (does anyone think Tom Delay would not have had Articles of Impeachment signed by every Repub in Congress by now if the situation were reversed?) and get them to sign on to Impeachment. Forget the ‘we don’t have the votes’ argument. It would scare them to death, just the investigation where their crimes would be front page news every day as the proceedings are covered.

Once the public gets a glimpse of the extent of their crimes, what Republican up for re-election is going to want to be put in a position of supporting such crimes? If this were to happen, all their plans re stacking the courts would be thrown out the window, and I think we’d see a very different reaction from Bush et al. I think Republicans themselves would pay him a visit and tell him they are not going to commit political suicide on his behalf.

But they are safe, Bush has them pegged. He knows they have no will to stop him.

What’s interesting is how it’s always the Dems who we are to worry will be smeared, and by the criminals. It makes no sense and completely insults the American people. Or is it that there is no such concern, that it’s just a fear tactic, a talking point, for the Dems who are have no desire to stop them. I can’t wait to see what excuse they’ll have for being unable to use the power of Congress to overcome this blatant abuse of power.

My guess is that they will take the route of going to court and when they lose, they’ll simply whine again, saying that they tried, but those nasty Republicans did it again. And the dk operatives, maybe Occam’s ‘broken que tip’ (lol marisacat) will write a diary about what ‘brilliant strategy this was, and how it will show the people what renegades the Repubs are’ and this will get Dems elected in 2008! But even if that were true, it still doesn’t solve the problem that once again, Bush gets away with yet another crime.

If I could ask the Presidential candidates a question, it would be this: ‘If you are elected, since Democrats have failed so far to hold the Bush administration accountable for their crimes, do you promise not to do what Clinton did re the Bush Sr/Reagan administration, and conduct investigations and indict and convict all those who are guilty of crimes?’ So far, no one has asked them this question.

I still think the real problem is they lay the case, the question becomes and why did congress just sit there and/or aprove it.

They may be trying to create some Miers incident so the “public” will just focus on the latest material and forget the last 6 years happened. They wont have to talk about the eavesdropping and abu gharib etc etc. Congress cant be found culpable in any of the justice dept contempt stuff. They are looking for something inmpeachable that wont bite them in the ass.

If the Plame stuff goes anywhere it gives re enforces the idea that poor dim witted congress was just mislead.

Hillary cant have trials and testimomy and evidence on TV syaing one thing when she is trying to sell her version of the past.

If the Plame stuff goes anywhere she can just say SEEEEEEE, i was mislead, not my fault.

IIRC congress voted 98 or 97 affirmative for Negroponte t be sent to Iraq.

Sigh – I didn’t remember how many confirmed him. And people still think we have two parties! Nor did I know about Clinton’s giving him an ambassadorship to the Philipines. Why would he do that? Don’t president normally reserve ambassadorships for members of their own party who helped get them elected? I wonder what Negroponte did for Clinton? It just gets worse and worse.

In the minds of men converted to its creed. It must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form of a disciplined army of occupation too small to fulfil the doctrine of acreage: too few to adjust number to space, in order to dominate the whole area effectively from fortified posts.

“It must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Rebellions can be made by 2 per cent active in a striking force, and 98 per cent passively sympathetic … Granted mobility, security … time, and doctrine … victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive, and against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain.”

Has the US General David Petraeus read this? Has Bush? Have any of the tired American columnists whose anti-Arab bias is wobbling close to racism, bothered to study this wisdom? I remember how Daniel Pipes – one of the great illusionists of modern American journalism – announced in the summer of 2003 that what the Iraqis needed was (no smirking here, please), a “democratically minded strongman”.

They had already had one, of course, our old chum Saddam Hussein, whom we did indeed call a “strongman” when he was our friend and when he was busy using our gas against Iran. And I do wonder whether Bush – defeated, as he is, in Iraq – may not soon sanction an Iraqi military coup d’état to overthrow the ridiculous Maliki “Green Zone” government in Baghdad. Well, as one of my favourite expressions goes, we’ll see.

But wait, Pipes is at it again. The director of the “Middle East Forum” has been writing in Canada’s National Post about “Palestine”. His piece is filled with the usual bile. Palestinian anarchy had “spewed forth” warlords. Arafat was an “evil” figure. Israeli withdrawal from Gaza had deprived Palestinians of the one “stabilising element” in the region. Phew! “Palestinianism” (whatever that is) is “superficial”. Palestinian “victimisation” is a “supreme myth of modern politics”. Gaza is now an “[Islamist] beachhead at the heart of the Middle East from which to infiltrate Egypt, Israel and the West Bank”.

One of these days, Pipes concludes, “maybe the idiot savant ‘peace processors’ will note the trail of disasters their handiwork has achieved”. He notes with approval that “Ehud Barak, Israel’s brand new Defence Minister, reportedly plans to attack Hamas within weeks” and condemns the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, for buoying Mahmoud Abbas’ “corrupt and irredentist Fatah”.

So we are going to have yet another war in the Middle East, this time against Hamas – democratically elected, of course, but only as a result of what Pipes calls “the Bush administration’s heedless rush to Palestinian elections”? It’s good to see that the late Tony Blair is already being dubbed a “savant”. But shouldn’t Pipes, too, read Lawrence? For insurgency is a more powerful “vapour” than that which comes from the mouths of illusionists.

And Daniel Pipes is taken seriously here, while Dahr Jamail and Robert Fisk and Greg Palast are ignored.

I just don’t get what seems to be the current CW at dkos that the public will suddenly get all up in arms about the Harriet Miers situation. First of all, they’ll be asking who she is (short memories or they didn’t even bother paying attention when she was shut out of the Supremes) and secondly, I think they’d find it much easier to understand if Bush et al were impeached over admitting to illegal wiretapping at least – something the public did actually get.

Hillary cant have trials and testimomy and evidence on TV syaing one thing when she is trying to sell her version of the past — revisionist

I agree.. I don’t know in this era the reaction but everything shut down the summer of 73. Of course no 25/7 cable… so soaps were off the air — soaps actors will STILL talk about how they had a huge break, went on summer vacations… .

The hearings and analysis ran round the clock, as much as that existed then, on the net works.

Hillary cannot have that and neither can Reid nor Pelosi. Because eventually the nation would hear from Dingell for isntance who had luncheons with MEers invited to speak to the House, whomever would attend, trying to get congress to understand how destabilising this war would be to the region.

They’d hear from Ritter who tried several times to reach Kerry and left packets of information at his office, begging him not to vote for the war.

LOL And they’d hear from Gerth and Van Atta about her speeches where she said exactly what Bush said… and claimed special knowledge from “my time in the WH”.

or maybe I didn’t…I get the shady characters mixed up sometimes. I do know I live blogged Abu’s hearings.

Blast from the past via wiki:

Congressional reaction was also positive. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), then-vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said, “I think that Ambassador Negroponte is a very sound choice. Ambassador Negroponte has served bravely and with distinction in Iraq and at the United Nations during a time of turmoil and uncertainty. He brings a record of proven leadership and strong management.” Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), then-ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee noted, “John Negroponte is a smart choice for a very important job. He’s a seasoned and skilled diplomat, who has served with distinction at the United Nations and in Iraq — and he has the full confidence of the president.”

That should have sent up a red flag right there – even without the death squads history.

Negroponte was in Mozambique this weekend handing over $500+ million in the Millennium Challenges project (ie. selling American foreign policy with payoffs). I read about that earlier today…for some reason…

And on April 21, 2005, despite new revelations regarding Negroponte’s involvement in illegally supporting the Contra war against Nicaragua, he was again easily confirmed as the nation’s first director of national intelligence by a vote of 98 to 2. The two dissenting votes came from Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), a long-time critic of Negroponte, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who offered some of the toughest questions during the confirmation hearing.

Wyden compared Negroponte’s version of what was happening in Honduras in the early ‘80s with the opinions of the CIA, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and Honduras’ human rights commissioner, noting: “It is almost as if you were an ambassador to a different country.” Wyden also asked Negroponte if he supported the current policy of “rendering suspected terrorists to countries with a long record of torture and barbaric practices,” to which Negroponte replied he would comply with current law.

The Observer understands that the Acpo proposal has been discussed in meetings between Brown and senior police officers. Whitehall sources said the PM was receptive to the association’s demands, but believes an upper detention limit is essential to avoid a de facto Guantanamo Bay based in the UK.

Ken Jones, the president of Acpo, told The Observer that in some cases there was a need to hold terrorist suspects without charge for ‘as long as it takes’. He said such hardline measures were the only way to counter the complex, global nature of terrorist cells planning further attacks in Britain and that civil liberty arguments were untenable in light of the evolving terror threat.

Regarding the DK admins not responding to emails: remember the email that went out to everyone in Armando’s email address list, the Angry Wife “Haec Olim” website? Immediately after reading the material about the Armando/mcjoan affair, I wrote to mcjoan and asked, “Is this true?”

She never responded.

It’s not as if I were some stranger – she and I had “talked” a few times on DKos, always on cordial terms.

When people rail about how mean I was to mcjoan and how horrible I was to have alluded to her affair with Armando, they should be aware that I gave her ample opportunity to clarify the situation, clear her name, or else say “I’m sorry but it’s private.”

But to diss fellow community members who are asking in good faith for clarification of a sordid story, and then attempt to stifle any discussion of the issue is very dishonorable, in my book.

Green Commons has had some good coverage and links to local activities in CA and elsewhere;Along w/prospects for the Presidential race. They seem to be plagues with frequent technical problems, unfortunately. I have registered there but never commented because they keep having problems. Still, it’s a good place to start. Indymedia usually has some coverage of Green candidates and local actions as well.

My laptop is dead again, which isn’t helping my spirits much. Will catch up with you all again later.

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration said Saturday that senior advisers would recommend the president veto Senate legislation that would substantially increase funds for children’s health insurance.

The legislation calls for a 61-cent increase in the federal excise tax on a pack of cigarettes.

How many bills is that now? And of course it was either stupid or deliberate to attach a tax on cigarettes to the bill. It virtually guaranteed a veto, or at least a good excuse for it.

But the Dems really seem to think this is good strategy. They really do believe that each time Bush vetos a bill, it will reflect on Republicans and get them elected in 2008. So they really are not serious about doing anything for the American people, such as ending the war etc. They are using the needs of the American to get themselves elected. That makes them worse than Republicans, who at least are up front about not caring about the American. This devious strategy is reprehensible but will lauded, as are all things reprehensible, by the so-called ‘progressive, BBB blogs.

And all this does is demonstrate their weakness, their refusal to put a stop to what they will claim is reprehensible, but are more than willing to subject the American people to for their own benefit. And they think that we, the people are blind to their deceptions.

Well, in 2005, UNICEF tried bombing a Smurf village to enhance a Belgian television campaign benefiting the rehabilitation of child soldiers in Burundi.

The short film pulls no punches. It opens with the Smurfs dancing, hand-in-hand, around a campfire and singing the Smurf song. Bluebirds flutter past and rabbits gambol around their familiar village of mushroom-shaped houses until, without warning, bombs begin to rain from the sky.

Tiny Smurfs scatter and run in vain from the whistling bombs, before being felled by blast waves and fiery explosions. The final scene shows a scorched and tattered Baby Smurf sobbing inconsolably, surrounded by prone Smurfs.

The final frame bears the message: “Don’t let war affect the lives of children.”

Philippe Henon, a spokesman for Unicef Belgium, said his agency had set out to shock, after concluding that traditional images of suffering in Third World war zones had lost their power to move television viewers. “It’s controversial,” he said. “We have never done something like this before but we’ve learned over the years that the reaction to the more normal type of campaign is very limited.”

Better blue than brown, in other words?

The family of the Smurfs’ creator, “Peyo,” approved the ad. Not sure if they’d be on board for costuming the ’08 Democratic candidate debates.

Btw, thanks for those links on Negroponte, Catnip. Absolutely disgusting and proof positive that the Dems are completely on board with the policies of torture and war and death squads and crimes against innocent populations.

That party cannot be reformed from within. You cannot get in unless you are willing to go along, and if not you will be driven out as was Cynthia McKinney who spoke out consistently about human rights violations and received little backing from her Democratic colleagues.

The researchers found that whites more accurately assessed the burden of discrimination borne by a hypothetical minority group in a fictional country than they did in the specific case of black people’s experience in the contemporary United States. In the hypothetical, whites estimated that the minority group members (described in the same terms as black Americans) deserved $1 million in compensation, but when presented with the question in the context of black Americans, the median estimate was $10,000.

That result was not surprising, but I was taken aback by the conclusion one of the researchers drew:

“Our data suggest that such resistance is not because White Americans are mean and uncaring, morally bankrupt or ethically flawed. White Americans suffer from a glaring ignorance about what it means to live as a Black American.”

I think the data — along with all my experience both as a white person and someone who writes about white supremacy — suggests exactly the opposite:

White Americans are mean and uncaring, morally bankrupt and ethically flawed, because white supremacy has taken a huge toll on white people’s capacity to be fully human.

My reasoning is simple: Given all the data and stories available to us about the reality of racism in the United States, if at this point white people (myself included) underestimate the costs of being black it’s either because (1) we have made a choice not to know, or (2) we know but can’t face the consequences of that knowledge.

On #1: To choose not to know about the reality of a situation in which one is privileged in an unjust system is itself a moral failure. When a system is structured to benefit people who look like me, and I choose not to listen to the evidence of how others suffer in that system, I have effectively decided not to act by deciding not to know.

On #2: If I do know these things but am not willing to take meaningful action to undermine that unjust system, then my knowledge doesn’t much matter. Again, I have failed in moral terms.

In either case, white people have incentives to underestimate the costs of white supremacy, to avoid facing our moral failing. Rather than suggesting whites “suffer from a glaring ignorance about what it means to live as a Black American,” it’s more accurate to point out that we whites typically choose to turn away from (1) the information readily available to us, or (2) the consequences of the information we do possess.

Much the same argument could be made about men’s assessment of the cost of being female in a patriarchal culture; or the way in which affluent people view the working class and poor; or how U.S. citizens see the rest of the world. In each case, there’s a hierarchical system that allows some to live in privileged positions while consigning others to subordinate status. The systems are unjust, and hence the advantages for the privileged are unjust. There’s no shortage of data and stories available to those of us in the privileged positions if we want to struggle to understand the lived experience of those without those privileges. If we willing avoid learning about that experience, or we know about it but fail to organize politically to change those systems, then we are responsible for the systems’ continued existence.

I see this much the same way myself, and friends and family look at me as though I was swearing the fairies were real and werewolves walk the earth when I talk about it.

But this doesn’t leaving me feeling particularly upbeat. The more I study and organize, the more I realize that the system of white supremacy is woven more deeply into this society — and, hence in some sense, into me — than I ever imagined. That leads me to a little thought experiment, a twist on the researchers’ study.

Imagine that you could line white people up in front of a door and get them to really believe that if they walked into a “race-changing room” they would emerge on the other side with black skin and an accent associated with blacks from the South. Then ask whites to set their price — the amount of money it would take them to agree to enter that room. Imagine there was an attendant there with stacks of cash, ready to hand money to the white folks. Just for fun, let’s say the cash award would be tax free. In that setting, when white people really had to face the possibility of being black — knowing all they know about the reality of life in white-supremacist America — what would the price be?

My guess is that a significant percentage of whites would not become black for any amount of money. I also am fairly confident that the median price set by the whites who might be willing to go into the room would be considerably more than $1 million.

Racism informs the way, and the frequency, with which we go to war. It informs how we organize our education systems and economy. It poisons everything.

Two trainee doctors arrested over the failed car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow have been released without charge.

The pair, aged 25 and 28, were arrested at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, Paisley, in the early hours of July 2 by Strathclyde Police and held at London’s high-security Paddington Green police station.

Police had until Sunday to charge or release them or apply to a magistrate for further time for questioning.

On Saturday, officers were given until July 21 to continue questioning another suspect – Dr Mohammed Asha, 26, of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, who was arrested on the M6 motorway in Cheshire on June 30.

Police have charged Dr Sabeel Ahmed, 26, with possessing information which could have prevented an act of terrorism.

He will appear at City of Westminster Magistrates Court in London on Monday.[snip]

The Hattifatteners can not be seen one by one. They are wandering group-beings who care about nothing else but reaching the horizon. The Hattifatteners can neither speak nor hear, but can see extremely well. They are decent enough in their way, but during thunderstorms they turn electric and should be avoided.

Balad Air Base, Iraq – Away from the headlines and debate over the “surge” in U.S. ground troops, the Air Force has quietly built up its hardware inside Iraq, sharply stepped up bombing and laid a foundation for a sustained air campaign in support of American and Iraqi forces.

Squadrons of attack planes have been added to the in-country fleet. The air reconnaissance arm has almost doubled since last year. The powerful B1-B bomber has been recalled to action over Iraq.

The escalation worries some about an increase in “collateral damage,” casualties among Iraqi civilians. Air Force generals worry about wear and tear on aging aircraft. But ground commanders clearly like what they see.

“Night before last we had 14 strikes from B-1 bombers. Last night we had 18 strikes by B-1 bombers,” Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said approvingly of air support his 3rd Infantry Division received in a recent offensive south of Baghdad.

Statistics tell the story: Air Force and Navy aircraft dropped 437 bombs and missiles in Iraq in the first six months of 2007, a fivefold increase over the 86 used in the first half of 2006, and three times more than in the second half of 2006, according to Air Force data. In June, bombs dropped at a rate of more than five a day.

Inside spacious, air-conditioned “Kingpin,” a new air traffic control center at this huge Air Force hub 50 miles north of Baghdad, the expanded commitment can be seen on the central display screen: Small points of light represent more than 100 aircraft crisscrossing Iraqi air space at any one time.

The increased air activity has paralleled the reinforcement of U.S. ground troops, beginning in February, to try to suppress the insurgency and sectarian violence in the Baghdad region. Simply keeping those 30,000 additional troops supplied has added to demands on the Air Force. […]

Air Force engineers, meanwhile, are improving this centrally located home base, which supports some 10,000 air operations per week.

The weaker of Balad’s two 11,000-foot runways was reinforced – for five to seven years’ more hard use. The engineers next will build concrete “overruns” at the runways’ ends. Balad’s strategic ramp, the concrete parking lot for its biggest planes, was expanded last fall. The air traffic control system is to be upgraded again with the latest technology.

“We’d like to get it to be a field like Langley, if you will,” said mission support chief Reynolds, referring to the Air Force showcase base in Virginia.

The Air Force has flown over Iraq for many years, having enforced “no-fly zones” with the Navy in 1991-2003, banning Iraqi aircraft from northern and southern areas of this country. Today, too, it takes a long view: Many expect the Army to draw down its Iraq forces by 2009, but the Air Force is planning for a continued conflict in which it supports Iraqi troops.

“Until we can determine that the Iraqis have got their air force to sufficient capability, I think the coalition will be here to support that effort,” Lt. Gen. Gary North, overall regional air commander, said in an interview. The new Iraqi air force thus far fields only a handful of transports and reconnaissance aircraft – no attack planes. [snip]

WASHINGTON, July 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Today on NBC’s Meet the
Press, columnist Robert Novak revealed one of his most secret sources: Sen.
Tom Eagleton (D-MO) gave him the quote that labeled 1972 Democratic
presidential nominee George McGovern as the candidate of “Amnesty, Abortion
and Acid.” This is reported for the first time in his new memoir: The
Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington (Crown Forum).
Following McGovern’s stunning victory in the ’72 Massachusetts primary,
Novak began calling Democratic politicians to get their reaction. The April
27, 1972 Evans & Novak column reported an anonymous source as saying
“people don’t know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion and legalization of
pot. Once middle America — Catholic middle America, in particular — find
this out, he’s dead.” This sent Washington into a frenzy to try to figure
out which Democrat was bad-mouthing one of his own.
Ironically, several months later Eagleton would be tapped as McGovern’s
running mate, only to be replaced after it was learned that Eagleton
underwent electro-shock therapy for depression. [snip]

Eagleton was a hard core pro life Catholic. You cannot trust them. Novak mentioned that before Eagleton left the senate, he authored a bill to overturn Roe.

55 – Aha! I’ve seen the word “moominpapa” around and always wondered about the reference. Most intriguing. I see their creators turned down deals from Walt Disney. That’s walking the talk, isn’t it?

MCat – Maybe the candidates could be persuaded to wear custom-tailored “theme” hats, expressing their priorities, and print their platform details on boxes filled with Screaming Yellow Zonkers. The latter could be distributed to the press and public, for nourishment and close review.

IB, I remember that ad …. sad that people can’t just visualize the horror of war without having to bring it to them in a format that should only be required for children. But good for anyone who cares enought to try to stop the carnage.

Aw, SV, smurfs are okay … lol!

Re people having affairs, personally I think such things should never be in the public domain, as I felt with Clinton. But anyone who is foolish enough to have done what he did, should have understood that he was risking giving the rightwing ammunition to charge the entire party with hypocrisy regarding their position on workplace affairs and the potential for unfair treatment of employees not willing to use sex to further their careers.

But it happens and there will always be people who further their own ambitions that way. It’s certainly obvious on the bbb and no less hypocritical and adds just one more reason for their overall lack of credibility. So it’s not surprising that you would not receive an answer. A denial would have sufficed, but when there is silence, people reach their own conclusioins, and most have, not only in that one case, but with others. Democratic hypocrisy, screaming about equal rights for women, but do as they say, not as they do.

Otoh, it’s all such mundane, boring trivia which goes on in offices all over the country on too regular a basis to make it even slightly interesting when you consider what is going on in this world. Which is why I pretty much ignored the whole thing …people are dying, every minute of every day …. while the bloggers play in their sandboxes … and people like Dahr Jamail, Cindy Sheehan, Greg Palast, and so many un-named heroes try to make a difference. Those are the people I respect. The ‘bloggers’ are an occasional diversion, not much else.

Kind of inspired by MITM places race comment, I was remembering Lady Bird and the Highways….

There arent as many flowers as I remember as a small child in the early 70’s. It was really a sight. I remember driving and asking my parents Whats that flower and that one. Some of them, well, had pretty racists names. I still lapse to this day and sometimes refer to a Black-Eyed Susan as something else.

I must say, all those Dem candidates on the stage for the debate reminds me of the climactic baseball game at the end of the first Naked Gun movie, where they show the announcers booth, and introduce one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, etc. famous announcers who’ll be calling the game. Such a number would result in unintelligible babble of course, and I’ll just assume this “debate” did too.

In the deadliest suicide bombing in Pakistan since January, 24 paramilitary soldiers were killed and 26 other people were wounded Saturday near Miram Shah, the headquarters of the restive North Waziristan’s tribal region.. . . The deadly surge in violence occurred barely a day after the Interior Ministry in Islamabad announced the end of Operation Silence after a bloody raid to get at militants holed up in the Red Mosque, known here as the Lal Masjid, and the adjoining seminary.

A military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, said all those killed were from the paramilitary force, and five from the military were among those wounded.

He declined to speculate whether the attack had been linked to the end of the Red Mosque siege or to the military takeover of checkpoints that had been abandoned after an agreement with militants last September.

“It could be anything,” General Arshad said, adding that the cause of the spike in violence was being investigated further.

I suppose I’ll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush’s presidency will probably be a successful one.

Let’s step back from the unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds that have characterized the Bush administration. Let’s look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see? First, no second terrorist attack on U.S. soil — not something we could have taken for granted. Second, a strong economy — also something that wasn’t inevitable.

And third, and most important, a war in Iraq that has been very difficult, but where — despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless “benchmark” report last week — we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome.

About 50 years ago, the late, great Dwight Macdonald published an anthology of parodies (Parodies: An Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm–And After) that included a section devoted to self-parodies such as Little Nell’s Death from Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop and selected portions of a transcript of a press conference by President Eisenhower (Ike was a notoriously bad off-the-cuff speaker). History will doubtless deem this Kristol effusion worthy of inclusion in an updated edition in the unlikely event that Kristol is remembered by anyone other than his immediate family 5 minutes after his death.

#56. The US military has obviously decided to use the same tactic that it uses in Afghanistan since they know they don’t have enough troops on the ground. Just drop bombs and hope you don’t kill too many innocent civilians. After all, the cost of that is just a trite apology and a few thousand dollars in compensation money. Buying off their mistakes – which has turned more and more people against them in Afghanistan.

#52. Thanks for posting that article about racism and privilege, MitM. Ironically though, since it seems the American public doesn’t have much of a problem with buying off Iraqi and Afghanistan families whose loved ones were killed in the wars with only ~$2,500, I doubt very much that those surveyed would really part with one million dollars in terms of reparations. But the point about how Black Americans are devalued as people is certainly valid. Just look at the aftermath of Katrina.

The US military has obviously decided to use the same tactic that it uses in Afghanistan since they know they don’t have enough troops on the ground. Just drop bombs and hope you don’t kill too many innocent civilians.

You’re absolutely wrong about this. They don’t care whether or not they kill civilians. In fact, piling up a body count is now probably one of the principal objectives. As those interviews with Bush/Oil War vets in The Nation makes clear, at this point we’re in The Only Good Iraqi Is A Dead Iraqi territory, if we weren’t all along.

Very good post and links, although the last two don’t seem to work. This, from that July 3 Asia Times article, was extremely prescient:

Some reports claim that about 70 suicide bombers are waiting to be unleashed from the mosque. But any attack on the mosque could set off a chain reaction all the way from Islamabad to the Afghan border and beyond, in the process throwing Pakistan further into turmoil.

I recall reading a piece in our own MSM (just which source I don’t remember) that the Red Mosque militants were an isolated fringe group with no sympathizers among the general public. I must remember to visit the Asia Times more often, whenever I have I’ve been very impressed with it, I simply forget about it.

When I hold my cursor under “which is obviously just a way to prop up Musharraf” and “Bottom line: the war is expanding” I see the word “Done” in my status bar. The Asia Times article is linked in the first part of the sentence that precedes “which,” so maybe it’s just a case of the coding indicating a link where none is meant to be.

some one should really do a diary on this at some of the BBBs… Polling says America is over the two party thing.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 58% say the two major parties are doing “such a poor job” that a third party is needed. Just a third say the established parties “do an adequate job of representing the American people.“

This is what happens when the so-called largest progressive blog on the tubes is busy posting pootie pics and loyalty oaths to the useless Democrats while being obsessed about “trolls” and ratings. Some of those commenters are absolutely clueless about what’s going on in Iraq.

Not about my probable run against Pelosi. For the record, my understanding is that I am not allowed to post about my potential candidacy, but otherwise am fine – which is why I asked my good friend Linda Milazzo to put this up for me since I’m on the road with Journey For Humanity.

I am on my way to a memorial service for a dear activist friend right now, but I’ll be on later…

This isn’t just a place to get free publicity whenever you feel like it. And I like so much of what she has done for the peace movement, but damnit…..when you post a diary here…you are supposed to interact. You don’t just post it, cause a big commotion, and then never reply again. She could start her own website to do that. This is a community. And I wouldn’t repeatedly walk into a large group of people with a megaphone – yell inflammatory stuff about the people in that crowd – and then walk away. If you want to interact at dKos – especially when you create controversy – then post the diary when you have time to interact.

Check out my GOREGANIC line of organic Al Gore t-shirts and hats

by Scout Finch on Sun Jul 15, 2007 at 12:27:27 PM PDT

Holy christ on a stick. Fucking programmed cult members with absolutely no regard for the fact that she’s going to a memorial service.

That has to be one of the worst displays of inhumanity I’ve ever seen on that site.

I hope everyone has lotsa popcorn for this one! thereisnospoon presents

Today, I am greatly honored to introduce to the DailyKos community and the world the creation of a new kind of campaign–a campaign of Kossacks, run by Kossacks, managed by Kossacks, and with a homegrown Kossack as its candidate.

He says this like it’s a good thing!!

Fast forward to today, and what had been a twinkle in our eyes is now a reality–complete with a Kossack candidate, a Kossack campaign manager, and an entire Kossack brain trust full of some of the DailyKos community’s best and brightest from Southern California and beyond. The ActBlue page is ready, the local grassroots and insiders behind us, and every structure in place. There is no credible primary challenger looming, and the Republican incumbent is, shall we say, more than a little vulnerable.

Unfortunately, I can’t give you the name of the candidate just yet. I’ve been asked by the campaign–whose identity is being kept secret until the official announcement is made here on July 18 (so if you know the secret, keep quiet until then!)–to begin the online rollout for the campaign right here on Daily Kos where it all began.

This should be fucking hilarious! Even if the mystery homegrown Kossack candidate should manage to get elected to congress, they will fucking eat him/her alive.

RE the revisionist link on the last thread to psychology today – I don’t think I’ve read such reductivist biologistic shit in years… Sexual harassment isn’t sexist because men are treating women as men? Good lord! That’s akin to Schlafley’s argument that the ERA shouldn’t be adopted because it would result in co-ed bathrooms.

Just in time, too – the loathsome jiacinto smelled something burning and hustled over with his lawn chair and Koozie to join the fun. He suggests Sheehan take her “radical agenda” over to redstate or lucianne.com.

#83. I’m still stuck on the Scandinavian women have blonde hair because it’s cold there so they have to appear desirable to men somehow because they’re all bundled up in their clothes all of the time argument.

I can see from the comments about my last post, not everyone is paying attention to what I am actually saying and instead interpreting what they want to hear. My posts here aren’t for publicity or controversy I use the KOS to get out info and thoughts about critical issues affecting the real world – not the blogosphere.

Since I don’t have time explain and dissect every post I make, I am un-registering & removing myself from the DK. If you want to know where to find me, read my blogs at http://www.impeachbush.org

signing off & tuning out,
Cindy

by CindySheehan on Sun Jul 15, 2007 at 01:47:22 PM PDT

*
Thank god n/t (1+ / 0-)

Recommended by:
bluedog

by geordie on Sun Jul 15, 2007 at 01:55:30 PM PDT

[ Parent ]
*
my guess

Disgusting fucks… watch them turn around a cheer lead for Nelson and Casey

BTW, catnip, I found a replacement link to durante’s piece via Green Commons. Posted it yonder at MBM, since the BMT link doesn’t show anything. Maybe somebody there decided durante was Not Ready For Prime Time.

Oh, well. The people who most need to read such things are too busy rallying ’round the Orange Flag to bother. Bunch of pigeons, ripe for another pocket-picking and ceremonial Boot to the Head[tm]. I’d feel sorry for them if they weren’t so fucking cruel and stupid.

Here is what Tentola says about the passage (ecerpted above) Nichols on Nancy (“she is wrong”)

This is unmitigated balderdash. Nancy Pelosi is “disregarding her oath of office” because she disagrees with John Nichols on impeachment? Nonsense.

And does John Nicols think Nancy Pelosi is not disregarding her oath of office by not using the Spending Power to check the excesses of President Bush? A power that she can use without dreaming of Republican cooperation? Nichols does not say. He has impeachment fever and any steps that are not about impeachment do not interest him.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is fully backing a Pakistani military crackdown on hotbeds of al Qaeda and Taliban activity amid mounting concern over terrorism, President George W. Bush’s national security adviser said on Sunday.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s 10-month-old peace deal with tribal elders in northwestern Pakistan that was aimed at marginalizing pro-Taliban militants, has failed, said Stephen Hadley, the adviser.

“It has not worked the way he wanted. It has not worked the way we wanted it,” he said on the ABC television program “This Week.”

Concern about a resurgent militant threat has grown over the last two months, Hadley added. “And we’re responding to it … In the short run, we need to take it on operationally,” he said without elaborating.

He doesn’t have to elaborate. Musharraf gave US and NATO forces permission already to launch attacks there.

He added on CNN’s “Late Edition” program: “We have provided all appropriate support that we can consistent with Pakistani sovereignty,”

In other words, they’ve forked over billions of dollars to prop up Musharraf and now he owes them big time. Screw “sovereignty”.

Geez, is there any show Hadley wasn’t on this morning?

Hadley said Taliban havens in northwest Pakistan were a threat to both Musharraf’s government and the United States. “There is pooling of Taliban there. There is training, and there are operations,” he said on Fox News.

Maybe I should have just diaried this and posted a link.

Anyway:

Pro-Taliban militants in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan on the Afghan border on Sunday called off the peace deal signed in September after accusing Pakistani authorities of violating the pact.

Under it, Pakistan agreed to stop military operations against the militants in return for their pledge to not send fighters across the border into Afghanistan and would not launch attacks on Pakistan’s army.

The Bush administration: happily expanding the “war on terrorism” every week on a new front they’re too strapped to handle.

Berube is at Pandagon, baiting Leftie stragglers while at the same time forbidding them to post to his precious thread– which proclaims that Clinton could have won even without Perot.

Coming soon: Berube agrees the commentary made by the pollster in An Unreasonable Man. You know, the proclamation that Bush could have won even without whatsisname in the race. Because obviously, it couldn’t just be Leftie spoilers that spoil races. Or it couldn’t just be Rightie spoilers that fail to spoil races.

Yeah, right. [rolleyes]

I wonder if anyone over there had a thing to say about Sheehan’s poison pen letter to the DP. Not that I looked very hard, since I’m already depressed.

While Pakistan would like to resolve the conflicts through political means, the U.S. seeks quick military solution. One may ask the supporters of military solution that how on earth could one destroy every single Taliban to claim victory.

I am reminded, for what I think are obvious reasons, that last night when I went to see a play featuring a couple of friends at Georgetown University, I saw along the route to the campus a handful of people holding signs saying “Scientology Event.” Apparently, L. Ron Hubbard’s disciples were holding some kind of meeting or seminar there. They really should have had more people out, there were only about 5 posted along the 2 miles from the Francis Scott Key Bridge to the campus entrance by the hospital on Reservoir Road. There were also lots of well dressed people going to a Bastille Day celebration at the French Embassy, making the cultists even harder to spot. No trouble picking out the cultists over at LittleOrangeSnotballsR’Us. I admire your willingness to report on their idiotic schemes, but remember what Nietzche said; stare not too long into the abyss lest the abyss stare into you. 🙂

liberalcatnip, no. 81,

Yes, truly despicable. And so laughable. If these people had any clue as to just how irrelevant they are, they’d jump into the sea like the good little lemmings they are. I’ll repeat Nietzsche’s advice for you as well, at this point I think one risks losing IQ points by visiting that site. 🙂

KABUL: President Hamid Karzai neither heads nor has the membership of any political party, his spokesman said, scotching media speculation that the Afghan leader is on the verge of launching a new entity called Democratic Party.

Good for Cindy for quitting finally quitting daily kos. What a disgraceful display of petty nonsense. They obviously do not want to talk about torture and the complicity of the Democratic Party –

Nice going though, they rail against being accused of banning her and then go ahead and drive her off the blog.

And they whine about people saying nasty things about them when they behave like that.

As for Big Tent, did he not realize what the topic of the show was? But I agree with him that she is also violating her oath by not using the power she has to stop funding the war. One violation does not erase another. The woman is a disaster. And in case anyone forgot, she was also involved in secret trade discussions with Bush. When ARE they going to wake up?

Btw, Catnip, Barb seems to think you’ve (or we) are telling lies about Daily Kos. Maybe she could be more specific. All I’ve seen here is a recording of their own words and actions, usually accompanied by links to the site. At least we’re giving them much-needed page hits.

Gosh, great question (4+ / 0-)
Recommended by:MajorFlaw, Nightprowlkitty, lineatus, Morgan Sandlin
Should people interact with you given that you spend most of your time at another blog lobbing continual insults at this site and everyone who posts here? Vicious personal insults and/or complete lies. What a joke.

Arrogant lips are unsuited to a fool– how much worse lying lips to a ruler – Proverbs 17:7

by BarbinMD on Sun Jul 15, 2007 at 02:48:20 PM PDT

I’m sure someone from the reality based community will provide a list of the ‘lies’ ….

Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent’s corrupt leaders, warlords, “tribal” conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like “Can Bono Save Africa?” or “Will Brangelina Save Africa?” The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and “civilization.”

There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one’s cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head — because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West’s fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West’s prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.

Why do the media frequently refer to African countries as having been “granted independence from their colonial masters,” as opposed to having fought and shed blood for their freedom? Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned? How is it that a former mid-level U.S. diplomat receives more attention for his cowboy antics in Sudan than do the numerous African Union countries that have sent food and troops and spent countless hours trying to negotiate a settlement among all parties in that crisis?

No kidding. I’d pay no mind at all to the oceans of bad nor the smidgens of good (ie– Moiv) at DK were it not for this space. Even what’s good over there is readily found elsewhere, with less bullshit to wade through along the way. You just have to know where to look.

JJB – stare not too long into the abyss lest the abyss stare into you.

As I remarked to someone the other day: I avoid going to DKos nowadays because it has a very bad smell – like rotten meat. I don’t usually get psychic impressions via my sense of smell, so this is interesting.

Bastille Day celebrations can be fun. My husband got his PhD with a delightful young French guy named Benoit. He was short dark and handsome and would smuggle homemade foie gras and saucissons through customs when coming back from visits home. Once he invited us to a Bastille Day celebration at the home of a couple of his French friends. They served a fantastic meal. The dessert was a charlotte russe topped with a guillotine made of chocolate. Yum! The French know how to party.

Hey, sv, I am cooking up some of them there lentils of yours and the house smells terrific. My black mood is rapidly evaporating.

The yuppie mart was selling roasted (albiet not smoked) duck breast in the deli and I took it as a sign. Bought one to slice up later on, and some baby lettuce to go on the side. Just pretend not to notice that I’m serving it with the Portugese “green” wine instead of a nice Red. Shhhh…

Cindy Sheehan is on my teevee – being interviewed by Rick Sanchez on CNN. More of that interview coming up at 7:30 pm ET.

Stick that in your “activist” pipes and smoke it, kossacks.

And no doubt someday she will be asked about being driven off the so-called progressive blog, daily kos. So stupid of them to alienate someone who is highly thought of by most of the country and around the world, and who has access to the media both national and international. When that blog implodes they will have no one but themselves to blame.

I was thinking about an incident that happened when Cindy was in the ditch near Bush’s ranch in 2005. A bunch of Freepers from Freerepublic showed up. One of them had a sign that said ‘The Witch in the Ditch’! Not unexpected at the time considering the source. But one of the ‘head freepers, who obviously has more decency than the crowd over at dk, went over and asked the sign-holder to take it down. A scuffle followed as the ‘good freeper’ tried to take it away when the other guy refused. It was eventually removed although the ‘good freeper’ was slightly injured.

That kind of mocking and shaming was not acceptable to most of the freepers there. Not because they liked her or what she was doing, Bush was their hero after all, but they had enough decency to recognize that to treat the mother of a soldier killed in the war so poorly was simply not acceptable and would not win them any points with anyone.

Maybe ‘kossacks’ could take a few lessons from those freepers …. they sure need to get them from somewhere.

One thing the Freepers do have on the kossacks is activism. Even if they are thugs they do show up at places/events. Hell, they even had a verb named for them. At best, Kos will become adjective with a negative connatation.

It’s very light and a bit fizzy, sv. But not super-sweet or as bubbly as champagne. Sort of halfway between an autumnal hard cider and a summery White. The fruity taste is a little reminscent of some German Whites I’ve had. Or a lighter Pinot Gris. (Some good Pinot Gris is to be had from OR,at least in my amateur estimation.)

i disagree with some of that post catnip. They are obsessed with the rules to stifle opposing thought, dissent and maybe getting the mob to move in a certain direction on issues. Its not about the rules but the way they use them and for what purpose. As her about tomorrow’s headlines across the blogoshere:

So.

At Thursday's debate, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended their Medicare for All plan. They faced criticism from several rivals, including Senator Amy Klobuchar, who described it as a "bad idea," and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who claimed the bill shows Sanders and Warren do not "trust the American people."

At the third presidential primary debate in Houston, Texas, senator and 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Warren also spoke about her stance on U.S. trade policy and how "our trade policy in America has been broken for decades."

After being questioned about the crisis in Venezuela, Senator Bernie Sanders defended his vision of democratic socialism. "I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia: guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical le […]

Debate moderator Jorge Ramos of Univision grilled former Vice President Joe Biden over the Obama administration's deportation record. Biden refused to answer whether he did anything to prevent Obama from deporting a record 3 million people.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Friday demanded internal emails, detailed financial information and other company records from top executives of Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, and Alphabet Inc's Google, widening the antitrust probe of Big Tech.

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Friday asked a government watchdog to look into the Trump administration's decision to launch an antitrust probe into four automakers cooperating with California on tighter greenhouse gas emissions limits that Trump is trying to eliminate.

A lawyer for former FBI official Andrew McCabe pressed U.S. prosecutors on Friday to drop their politically sensitive case against him, citing reports that suggest they may be having trouble securing criminal charges.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.